First, then, De Rossi observes it as a notable fact, attested by the contents of all the Catacombs, that the most ancient inscriptions on Christian tombs differ from those of the Pagans “more by what they do not say, than by what they do say.” The language of Christian epigraphy was not created in a day any more than Christian art was. There were urgent reasons for changing or omitting what the Pagans had been wont to use; but the Church did not at once provide anything else in its stead. Hence the very earliest Christian tombstones only recorded the bare name or names of the deceased, to which, in a very few instances, chiefly of ladies, one or two words, or the initials of words, were added, to denote the rank or title which belonged to them—e.g., C.F., clarissima femina, or lady of senatorial rank. Generally speaking, however, there is an entire absence from these epitaphs of all those titles of rank and dignity with which Pagan monuments are so commonly overloaded. And the same must be said of those titles also which belong to the other extremity of the social scale, such as servus and libertus. One cannot study a dozen monuments of Pagan Rome without coming across some trace of this great social division of the ancient world into freemen and slaves. Yet in a number of Christian inscriptions in Rome, exceeding twelve or thirteen thousand, and all belonging to centuries during which slavery still flourished, scarcely ten have been found—and even two or three of these are doubtful—containing any allusion whatever to this fundamental division of ancient Roman society. It is not to be supposed that there was any legislation upon the subject; not even, perhaps, a hint from the clergy; it was simply the spontaneous effect of the religious doctrines of the new society, reflected in their epigraphy as in a faithful mirror. The children of the Primitive Church did not record on their monuments titles of earthly dignity, because they knew that with the God whom they served there was no respect of persons; neither did they care to mention the fact of their bondage, or of their deliverance from bondage, to some earthly master, because they thought only of that higher and more perfect liberty “wherewith Christ had set them free;” remembering that “he that was called, being a bondman, was yet a freeman of the Lord; and likewise he that was called, being free, was still the bondman of Christ.”
We repeat, then, that the most ancient inscriptions on Christian gravestones in Rome consisted merely of the name of the deceased; ordinarily his cognomen only, though in some of the very earliest date the name of the gens was also added; not, we may be sure, from a motive of vanity, but merely for the purpose of identification. Large groups of inscriptions of this kind may still be seen in some of the oldest portions of subterranean Rome; traced in vermilion on the tiles, as in the Catacomb of Sta. Priscilla, or engraved in letters of most beautiful classical form, as in the Cœmeterium Ostrianum and the Cemetery of Pretextatus. The names are often of classical origin; nearly a hundred instances of Claudii, Flavii, Ulpii, Aurelii, and others of the same date, carrying us back to the period between Nero and the first of the Antonines. Very often there is added after the names, as on Pagan tombstones, such words as filio dulcissimo, conjugi dulcissimo, or, incomparabili, dulcissimis parentibus, and nothing else. In fact, these epitaphs vary so little from the old classical type, that had they not been seen by Marini and other competent witnesses—some of them even by De Rossi himself—in their original position, and some of them been marked with the Christian symbol of the anchor, we might have hesitated whether they ought not rather to be classed among Pagan monuments; as it is, we are sure that they belonged to the earliest Christian period; that they are the gravestones of men who died in the Apostolic, or immediately post-Apostolic age.
It was not to be expected, however, that Christian epitaphs should always remain so brief and bare a record. In the light of Christian doctrine, death had altogether changed its character; it was no longer an everlasting sleep, though here and there a Christian epitaph may still be found to call it so; it was no longer a final and perpetual separation from those who were left behind; it was recognised as the necessary gate of admission to a new and nobler life; and it was only likely, therefore, that some tokens of this change of feeling and belief should, sooner or later, find expression in the places where the dead were laid. Amid the almost innumerable monumental inscriptions of Pagan Rome that have been preserved to us, we seek in vain for any token of belief in a future life. Generally speaking, there is a total silence on the subject; but if the silence is broken, it is by faint traces of poetical imagery, not by the distinct utterances of a firm hope, much less of a clear and certain belief. The Christian epitaphs first broke this silence by the frequent use of a symbol, the anchor indicating hope, carved or rudely scratched beside the name upon the gravestone. Presently they added words also; words which were the natural outpourings of hearts which were full of Christian faith and love. On a few gravestones in those parts of the Catacomb of Sta. Priscilla already spoken of, we read the Apostolic salutation, Pax tecum, or Pax tibi; on one in the Cœmeterium Ostrianum, Vivas in Deo, and these are the first germs, out of which Christian epigraphy grew.
The epitaphs on the gravestones of the latter half of the second and of the third centuries are only a development of the fundamental ideas contained in these ejaculations. They still keep silence as to the worldly rank, or the Christian virtues of the deceased; they do not even, for the most part, tell us anything as to his age, or his relationship to the survivor who sets up the stone; most commonly, not even the day of his death or burial. But they announce with confident assurance that his soul has been admitted to that happy lot reserved for the just who have left this world in peace, that he is united with the saints, that he is in God, and in the enjoyment of good things; or they breathe a humble and loving prayer that he may soon be admitted to a participation in these blessings. They ask for the departed soul peace, and light, and refreshment, and rest in God and in Christ. Sometimes, also, they invoke the help of his prayers (since he, they know, still lives in God) for the surviving relatives whose time of trial is not yet ended. In a word, they proceed upon the assumption that there is an incessant interchange of kindly offices between this world and the next, between the living and the dead; they represent all the faithful as living members of one Body, the Body of Christ; as forming one great family, knit together in the closest bonds of love; and this love finding its chief work and happiness in prayer, prayer of the survivors for those who have gone before, prayer of the blessed for those who are left behind. We subjoin a few examples of the class of epitaphs of which we speak; and to secure accuracy, we will only give those that we have ourselves copied from the originals, and which every visitor to Rome may, therefore, still see if he pleases. The figures which we have appended to some of these inscriptions denote the column and the number under which they will be found in the gallery at the Lateran; the letters K.M. refer to the Kircherian Museum at the Roman College; and the last four may be seen where they were found, in the Catacomb of SS. Nereus and Achilles.
It would be easy to fill several pages with inscriptions of this kind; but enough has been produced to impress upon the reader a fair idea of their general character. They abound on the monuments of the second and third centuries; but after that date they fade out of use, and are succeeded by a new style of epigraphy, colder and more historical. Mention is now made of the exact age of the deceased, and of the length of his married life, not as to years only, but as to months, and sometimes even as to days and hours; of the day of his death also, more commonly of his burial, and, in a few instances, of both. To record the day of the burial (depositio) was creeping into use before the end of the third century; from the middle of the fourth, it became little short of universal; and in this century and the next, mention of the year also was frequently added. During this period, the phrase in pace became general, as a formula to be used by itself absolutely without any verb at all. In old Christian inscriptions in Africa, this phrase frequently occurs with the verb vixit; in which case the word pax is undoubtedly used in the same sense in which Tertullian, St. Cyprian, and other ecclesiastical writers employ it, as denoting peace with God to be obtained through communion with the Church; and in a community distracted by schisms and heresies, as the African Church was, such a record on the tomb of a Christian is intelligible and important. Not so in Rome; here the purport of the thousands of greetings of peace has reference to the peace of a joyful resurrection and a happy eternity, whether spoken of with confidence as already possessed, or only prayed for with glad expectation. The act of death had been expressed in earlier epitaphs under Christian phrases:—Translatus de sæculo; exivit de sæculo; arcessitus a Domino, or ab angelis; natus in æternum; or, much more commonly, Deo reddidit spiritum; and this last phrase had come into such established use by the middle of the third century, that the single letter R was a recognised abbreviation of it. But, in the second half of that century, and still more frequently afterwards decessit was used in its stead; and in the fifth century we find this again superseded by Hic jacet, pausat, quiescit, or requiescit.
Complimentary phrases as to the goodness, wisdom, innocence, and holiness of the deceased came into fashion about the age of Constantine, and in later times were repeated with such uniformity as to be quite wearisome; we see that they were simply formal and unmeaning; not unfrequently they were extravagant. Widows and widowers bear mutual testimony to one another’s gentleness and amiability of disposition, which enabled them to live together so many years semper concordes, sine ullâ querelâ, sine læsione animi. But this was, after all, only a return to the style of Pagan epigraphy, in which the very same phrases were frequently used. Children are commended for innocence and simplicity of spirit; sometimes also for wisdom and beauty! A child of five years old is miræ bonitatis et totius innocentiæ. This belongs to the year 387. In the next century, we find, for the first time, the phrase contra votum, which was also a return to the language of Pagan parents when burying their children. It cannot be said that there is anything absolutely unchristian in this phrase; at the same time, it does not savour of that hearty resignation to the will of God, or that cheerful assertion of His providence, to be found in other epitaphs; as, for instance, in more than a score of inscriptions recovered from the ancient cemetery in Ostia, in which this resignation is touchingly expressed by the statement that the deceased had ended his term of days “when God willed it.”
Of course, there still remains very much more that might be said, and which it would be interesting to say, about the thousands of inscriptions that have been found in the Catacombs; but we can only here attempt to indicate the main outlines of the subject, and enough has been said to satisfy our readers that Christian epigraphy followed the same laws of development as Christian art. At first it resembled the corresponding monuments of Paganism, excepting in those particulars in which Christian dogma and Christian feeling suggested a departure from that model. Still for a while that dogma and feeling found no distinct positive expression. Then it began to whisper, at first in hidden symbols, such as the dove, the anchor, and the fish; then, in the short but hearty apostolic salutation, Pax tecum, Pax tibi, Vivas in Deo, and the like. By and by these pious ejaculations, dictated by a spirit of affectionate piety towards the deceased, and a tender solicitude for his eternal welfare, became more frequent and less laconic; and so, step by step, a special style of Christian epigraphy grows up spontaneously (as it were) out of the joyful light of faith and hope of heaven. A certain type becomes fixed, varying indeed, as all things human never fail to vary, in some minor details, according to circumstances of time and place, or the peculiar tastes and fancies of this or that individual, yet sufficiently consistent to set a distinctive mark upon each particular period, whilst by its variations during successive ages it faithfully reflects (we may be sure) some corresponding change in the tone and temper of the ordinary Christian mind. Christian epigraphy was born as Christian art was, simultaneously with the introduction of Christianity itself into the metropolis of the ancient world; it acquired all its special characteristics, and perhaps attained its highest religious perfection, before the end of the third century, after which its beautiful and touching simplicity is somewhat marred and secularised by a gradual influx of some of those modes of thought and expression which prevailed in the world without.